Every week, I examine somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred app updates while looking for changes. The most interesting things turn into APK Teardowns or Download posts. Many of the remaining updates are unremarkable, amounting to a few bug fixes, routine updates to libraries, or even just pixel-level adjustments to layouts and images. However, there are usually a few updates that land somewhere in between. I don't want to spam readers with dozens of short posts, but I hate to ignore things that people might want to know about, so I'm going to wrap up the leftovers for a little weekend reading and call it Update Notes.

Friday evening brought us another update to the Google app. Unlike the previous version, there are a fair number of topics to discuss from a teardown. Google is preparing a screen for viewing your image searches from Lens, Collection sharing, a few changes to the layout of settings, and there are even hints of a mystery feature named Workspaces.

Last month, Google announced a pile of changes to both Search and Google Images, including coming Lens integration. The feature would allow interested parties to interact with media in Google Images to learn more about its content, via the magic of AI. If you've used Lens on your phone before, this is pretty similar, but applied to content in Google Images. According to a blog post today and our own confirmation, the feature is now rolling out.

One of the features that launched with early developer previews of Android 9 Pie was the option to select text and share images straight from Overview (aka Recents). Google promised that plenty of contextual options would show up there, like Spotify or Google Play Music when selecting the name of an artist, or Maps when selecting an address. Another integration that would have made a lot of sense is Lens, but Google's image recognition wonder was not showing up there — until now that is.

The biggest advantage of Pixel ownership, outside Google's highly optimized software experience, is the camera. Pixels have been consistently near or at the top of the pack when it comes to photo quality, and in no small part that's because of that Google software. A camera is more than just hardware, image processing can be as (or more) important than simply having a good sensor, and Google has included plenty of camera improvements this year. Let's take a look.

One year after the initial release of Google Lens alongside the Pixel 2, Google has integrated the AI-enabled tool directly into the Pixel 3's Google Camera app, and announced that some functions are available while the phone is offline. These changes add utility to the feature, and serve as a visual reminder to use the tool — something that's been lacking up to this point.

Google continues the day's deluge of announcements. Next up with a pile of new features is Google Images, with changes including Lens integration, image ranking tweaks, and expanded captions for context. A new "featured videos" card for automatically played results will also appear for some queries.

Google Lens, the app that makes you search the visual world around you as easily as if you were typing a couple of words on a computer, has received an update recently to v1.1 that adds a new sharing intent. This makes it even easier and more practical to find things with Lens.

Real-time detection in the Google Lens app began rolling out in May 2018, but it's still not possible to use the tool in real-time just by opening up the basic Google Camera app. That won't be the case for long, though, according to a new leak that shows Lens running by default in the Pixel 3's camera. In a video published (then quickly unpublished) by a tipster, the standard Google Camera clocks an email address on a business card, then a pop-up suggests copying that address over to Gmail.

Back at Google I/O, we heard that Google Lens would come to the camera apps on phones from Huawei, Motorola, Sony, and more. Sony already added Lens to its camera, and now it's Motorola's turn. Well, sort of. Lens still doesn't work in the camera app itself. It's just a shortcut, which wasn't the understanding we had at I/O. At least there are a few other additions to soften the blow.